


Elizabeth

by RedFive



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Pregnancy, Trauma, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-26 10:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17744354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedFive/pseuds/RedFive
Summary: Reba McClane thought she'd gotten away, but her past is not done with her yet. Neither is the Dragon. Inspired by Rutina Wesley's panel at #RDC4 where Reba discovers that she is pregnant with Francis's child.





	Elizabeth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PKA](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PKA/gifts).



> A very, very, VERY tardy fic for PKA who won last year's (*cough* Yes, I am the worst T_T but 2018 can bite me. ) FMF fic giveaway and requested a S4 Reba fic inspired by Rutina's panel at RDC4. I hope you enjoy it! Thank you for the inspiration and motivation to explore a new POV.
> 
> Beta’ed by @obfuscatedheart who made this prose shine!

I don’t cry when he asks if there is a father, and even then it takes a moment. Shock has dulled my senses. But shock gives way to anxiety as reality sets in. Is the pinched quality of his voice because this is the South and he is a bigot who can see from my medical records that I am an unwed black woman or because he knows who I am, who I really am? I can’t tell. My sense for these things is off, all of my senses are off lately, and now I know why.

It’s only when he says my “name,” Elizabeth, that the tears come. He says it sternly. Judgmentally. “Elizabeth.” Like I am an insolent child. Later, I will remember to hate him for that.

When I can breathe again, I ask him for the room. I need a moment alone to process his diagnosis, and I can’t do it with the scent of his cologne hovering nearby.

“Of course,” he says and slips something into my hand. It feels like a small remote with only one button. “When you are ready to talk, hit that button to call a nurse who will assist you. In the meantime, is there anyone we can call? Family? A counselor? Or...someone else?” By which he means “the baby daddy.” Under normal circumstances, his probing would feel invasive and rude, but these are not normal circumstances. And his questions give me some comfort. If he knew my secret, he wouldn’t be asking about the father in the present tense. He’d know because CNN covered it extensively: Francis is dead and the Dragon with him.

My therapist doesn’t like that I refer to them separately, but that is how Francis spoke of the Dragon—as an entity independent from himself—so it’s how I choose to remember him too. _Oh Reba, I cannot give you to him. HE will bite you._ I’ll go to my grave swearing that Francis spoke with genuine remorse before he blew his brains out.

“Pregnant?” I say to the empty room. I believe it’s empty at least. I wasn’t paying attention when the doctor allegedly left, but there are no sensory cues that tell me otherwise. No sounds. No scent. I am completely alone.

“Pregnant,” I repeat without the hitch at the end of the sentence that would make it a question.

I’m pregnant. Fuck. No need to wonder who the fathers are.

This is not where our story was supposed to go. It already had an ending, one where whatever was left of the Great Red Dragon lay alongside the ashes of Francis Dolarhyde in a landfill in Illinois. Francis had lit a pyre for himself in that house so that the world, and Reba McClane, could continue living without fear of the Dragon. And yet some part of him found a way to carry on.

 _Dammit, Francis._ A phantom weight settles around my torso as his ghost hugs me tight. He never speaks. Not with words that rattle in my ear and distract me from more important feedback such as the clicking of a street light when I cross the four lane boulevard near my cousin’s home in Pelham to get to the grocery store. I feel his words against my skin like a kiss, and right now he is saying my name silently against the back of my neck. He used to do this sort of thing when we were together. I thought he was just being shy about his feelings. I didn’t understand him as I do now, and wonder what he was really trying to tell me back then.

_Reba, I love you._

_Reba, why are you so good to me?_

_Reba...I killed again last night, an entire family—the children too. What do you think of that, Reba? Reba?_

Who kissed me the night we conceived? Who fell asleep with his nose pressed uncomfortably against my ear? Who is...was...the father of my child? Francis...or the Dragon?

My phone chimes. It is probably my cousin asking how I am doing. Dianna is supposed to pick me up from the clinic after work. I reach beneath my chair to find my purse, and with unsteady hands, I hunt for a packet of wet wipes.

To be honest, I like this new Francis better in some ways, even if he is only a projection, created by my trauma. He is something new to hold on to at least. My memories are all tainted by an overlay of crime scene photos and ligature marks, and therefore, no relief to me in my grief. Some things are easier now since the fire. There’s less uncertainty. Less mess. And no more sleepless nights spent wondering when my kind, shy man would tire and leave me for a sighted-woman with less damage in her past. That part is over. He left. Not in the way that I expected, but he left all the same—left me with the ghosts of half-remembered sensations and apparently a little bit more.

I lay my hand across my stomach; it churns with both worry and morning sickness. “Pregnant.” That seems to be the only word I’m capable of saying anymore.

With Francis’s baby…

And to think, an hour ago my greatest worry was that I was coming down with the flu or of being recognized as Reba McClane when I checked myself into the clinic.

What am I going to do now? Am I really going to have this baby?

Sometimes I think I’m beginning to understand what Francis was thinking about when he committed those horrible, horrible acts. For me, Reba McClane is effectively dead. I left her in the psych ward at Sacred Heart and started over in a backwoods town where Reba had some distant family. She still exists in photos, memories, and police reports, and there are those who will still try to engage with me like we are the same women. But we are not. I buried her to make a life for myself where I could stay sane. Reba had never wanted to be pregnant. The very thought of her body stretching and changing in ways she could neither see or control had horrified her.

“Dammit Francis,” I say aloud this time.

It’s not even a baby yet, barely more than a mass of tissue and unable to survive without me, its...mother. I don’t have to keep it. My family certainly won’t want me to. They’ll see it as a monster, and maybe it will be. The experts are still fighting over whether it’s nature or nurture that curdles the milk, but I have my own thoughts on the matter. Nature made me blind, but the life I’ve lived has made me strong. Strong enough to have his child though? The child of the only man Reba and I had ever wanted?

Reba couldn’t and wouldn’t have done it. She was weak. She had wanted to die of shame after Francis left her, but she’s gone now too. They’re all gone. Reba. Francis. The Dragon. They are the unwelcome guests at Thanksgiving when I, Elizabeth Roe, close my eyes at night to sleep.

It’s just me now...and the baby, which belongs to me in a way that it’ll never belong to Francis because I lived. I survived.

If I have the child, I will love it unconditionally and help it anyway I can. If it’s a girl, I’ll name her Reba and give the old Reba a second chance at a better life. If it’s a boy, well, that will take some thought. Maybe, I’ll name him...Richard. That sounds like a nice safe name.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you've enjoyed this fic, I'd love to hear from you.


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